013

The receiving room of House Saar’Jin had the solemn air of a deathbed vigil, one in which the dead didn’t know he was dying.

At a glance, it looked as opulent and grand as any old-world throne room. The domed ceiling was painted with a mural of the night sky, all crushed lapis and gold inlay. The mosaic tile floor traced ancient trade routes in brass fretwork and precious gems. And the four pillars supporting it all were slabs of marble carved in the image of long-dead merchant princes, stone patrons standing eternal vigil over the chamber’s throne.

Frank’s first thought was that this room was so lavish, you could slot it into the Vatican, no problem. Just drop the whole thing down next to the pope’s bedroom. No one would be the wiser. Hell, people would pay to see it.

But a closer look revealed the old glory was fading. The painted sky mural was peeling from the dome, stars flaking off like dried scabs. The mosaic floor was soot-stained and faded, with missing gemstones and chipped tiles. Incense hung in the air, thick and cloying, as if to mask the scent of mildew. And something chittered in the walls – rats or worse.

In the middle of it all, Princess Sazhra lounged on the Maelstrom Seat, a throne of banded iron and shipwood polished smooth by roiling waves. A canopy of sea drake hide shaded her from the sunlight slanting through tall glass windows, the windows stained indigo and turquoise and cerulean blue, so that the room itself looked like it was underwater.

She wore a dress of midnight silk, fitted tight and cut to reveal her pale shoulders, slender neck and ample cleavage. The dress was embellished with shocking pink feathers and shimmered as she moved, though it was threadbare at the hem. Her fingers were heavy with gold rings bearing the sigils of thrall houses and vassal guilds, although most were long dead, mementos of bygone glory like the room itself.

The room was crowded with retainers dressed in fine tunics and slave girls in clean togas. The base of the throne was ringed by a half dozen guardsmen dressed in that strange glass armor Frank had seen at the city gate. He recalled how one of them had picked him up off the ground as easily as you might lift a child. The thought made him uneasy, as did the look of the princess gazing down from her throne, equal parts amusement and cruelty, a cat playing with its dinner.

“Would you care for a drink?” she asked.

“No thanks,” Frank said.

“What if I insisted?” She traced a finger along her necklace, which was made of red coral, as beautiful and as sharp as the woman herself.

“Sure, but only if we share a cup. And you drink first.”

She smiled. “You’re learning.”

“I’m a quick study.”

“You’ll need to be if you want to survive Uqmai.”

“And what if I don’t want to survive in Uqmai? What if I just want to leave?”

“There’s the rub.” She leaned forward, appraising him as though he were some exotic animal a ship captain smuggled home to win her favor. “We Brass Men have a saying, one of our tenets of prosperity. ‘He who speaks first buys high.’ It’s a reminder to let others reveal their needs. The quietest voice controls the terms.”

“What terms? I didn’t ask for your help.”

“No, but you accepted it. And that little stunt cost me dearly. First, I will need to buy back the favor of the Tariff Lords, which won’t come cheap. Then those city guards you maimed will need to be compensated. And I have also earned the enmity of those filthy rat lovers, who can be trouble even for a merchant lord. That’s quite a tab you’ve run up for such a short visit.”

“I don’t like being in debt.”

“Lucky then, for I’m about to offer you a way out.”

Frank wished Thune were here now, if only to help with negotiations. The princess had him at a disadvantage. He didn’t know the history of this place, its customs, its people. His early impression of Argos was of a world that was ancient, complex and quick to violence. He could only guess at the old grudges that stretched invisibly through this city, threatening to ensnare him like a fly on a strand of spider web.

The old magister had refused to break character though, continuing to play the part of a lifeless head even after they were escorted into the Saar’Jin compound. He dared not speak until they were alone in their quarters, and only then in whispered tones.

Frank didn’t understand the need for secrecy. The princess almost certainly had powerful mentalists on the payroll, and they were sure to sniff out the spark of life in the decapitated head. Thune wasn’t so certain though. The way he figured, between his strange curse and his own mentalist powers, he’d be pretty well masked from psychic intrusions. Likewise, Frank’s latent psionic shield, and the presence of the Allflesh, would prevent all but the highest-ranked mentalists from accessing his mind.

It seemed to work so far. That creepy sawbones hadn’t bothered with Thune, at least. But that meant Frank was negotiating for himself now, always a bad move, in his experience.

His agent back home was the legendary Max Parker, Mighty Max to the press, Mad Max to anyone trying to get a deal done with one of his clients. Max was a shark – it said so, right there on his business card – but the only advice he gave Frank during contract talks was to shut the fuck up. Talent had no business negotiating for themselves, it would only lead to bad feelings, it could only get you hurt.

Besides, kid, Max liked to say, that’s why you pay me the big bucks.

But staring up at Princess Sazhra, Frank had a feeling even Mad Max would be out of his depths here.

“What’s your offer?” he said.

“I want you to steal something?”

“I’m not a thief.”

“You’re not a sailor either. Not yet. And if I send word to the docks, you never will be. There’s not a ship in port that will take you onboard if I forbid it. You’ll be stuck on this island.”

Frank’s jaw clenched. “Why me?”

“I was impressed by what I saw at the city gates.” She smiled, her face so beautiful it made Frank’s heart flutter. Her skin was flawless, with sharp cheekbones and eyes of burnished brass painted with desert kohl. Looking at her, he felt like a teenager again. “You’re a powerful warrior. Just the kind of man I need for a job like this.”

Beware the witch’s glamour. The voice was a pale imitation of Sarge’s. It had lost the barking drill instructor cadence he’d heard during the fight at the gate, returning to something softer and more subtle, like the warning that came to him in the grasslands.

As the voice faded, his vision cleared. Looking at the princess with fresh eyes, he found her still a rare beauty, but now with noticeable flaws. He spotted the faint lines of crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes, the hint of squid ink dye in her hair, the way the powder on her cleavage hid subtle sun spots.

“Flattery will only get you so far,” he said. “Why don’t you tell me the real reason you picked me.”

“You’re not from here, for one. You have no loyalties. No honor to lose. No powerful friends to betray me to.”

“And because I want to leave.”

She laughed. “I’ll have no fear of you sticking around after I’ve had my way with you.”

Frank noticed the throne was banded with iron that had long since rusted. It seemed odd that Argos should have bronze and iron at the same time. He would have assumed, given the knowledge of how to forge it, that iron would have surpassed bronze as the premiere metal of this world, as on Earth. But all the pieces he’d seen so far had been rusted and useless. He recalled a dim memory from when he pulled Thune’s iron shackles from the wall of the temple, when Thune had called the metal cursed. But then, this whole world seemed cursed.

“Let me guess,” Frank said. “It’s something priceless.”

“It’s a ring,” the princess said. “Nothing more than that.”

“Why do you want it so bad?”

“Asking such questions can be dangerous. Uqmai is brimming with mentalists. Sometimes the best defense against them is to not know anything. But in this case, it’s probably harmless for you to know the ring belonged to my mother. Its value is purely sentimental.”

“You’re going to risk all this,” he gestured broadly at the faded opulence surrounding them, “for sentiment?”

“No.” Her smile sharpened. “I’m going to risk exactly one thing. Your life.”

Frank stood silent. Above him, a chandelier fashioned from the ribcage of a giant whale swayed on unseen currents.

“How’s that for honesty?” she asked.

“What are the details?”

The princess draped one leg over the other and leaned back. “The ring was stolen nearly twenty years ago by a gutter-born rat named Dog-Eyes. A thief so slippery the gods tried to strike him dead with lighting twice, and missed him both times. He made a name for himself in the lower districts, but his final heist was the one that broke him. He vanished not long after. Most assume he died.”

“Did he?”

“Oh, he most certainly did,” Sazhra said. “He met his end in the black spire that looms above this very city. Perhaps you saw it on your approach.”

“I did,” Frank said. “I don’t recall seeing any doors though. Or even a window.”

“There are none. It’s a single piece of seamless black stone. It’s been here for a thousand years, older than Uqmai itself. For ages, people have plotted to get inside. Mystics and madmen have tried to unravel its secrets. But Dog-Eyes is the only man to ever enter the spire. You will be the second.”

“How?”

The princess snapped her fingers, and an attendant in a sea-green robe approached the throne, holding an object wrapped in velvet. The princess rose to accept it, moving like silk unspooling from a bolt. She held it delicately, as though it pained her.

“I have a book,” she said. “A forbidden tome I acquired during a trade with a merchant from the Burning Isle. The pages are dragon skin, inked in acid. It once belonged to an order of sorcerers known as The Servants of the Dweller on the Threshold.

Frank felt his stomach knot. Thune had warned him about sorcery, how it was an evil practice that brought only pain and ruin. He didn’t want any firsthand experience with it.

“They were obsessed with thresholds,” the princess continued. “Doorways, transitions, liminal spaces. They believed divinity could be found in moments of change. Birth. Death. The moment a shadow becomes a man. The flicker before a candle gutters out. Their rituals were strange. Their knowledge… troubling.”

“And you want to be involved with those kinds of people?”

“No, the order vanished ages ago. Some say they were wiped out by the Inquisition. Others claim they simply… stepped through.”

“Through what?”

“No one knows.” She unwrapped the velvet and revealed a tattered volume bound in cracked leather. “But there is a ritual in here to open a door anywhere, even in places that have no doors.”

“What does that entail?”

“An alignment of the moons and the tide. There must also be an offering. The book is unclear about what kind.”

“You want me to break into this tower during a cosmic alignment, perform some blood rite, and hope it doesn’t melt my face off just so I can fetch your mom’s old jewelry.”

“If you want off this island, that’s exactly what you’re going to do.”

“When?” he asked.

“The moons and tides will be aligned in three days.”

The throne room fell silent, as though all the air had been sucked out. Frank eyed the tapestries sagging on the walls, treasures from a dozen lost empires, their golden threads dulled with time.

Time. Why did he never seem to have enough of it? Why did it always seem to be running out?

“Do you know what’s inside?” he asked.

“No. And that’s the truth. Whatever lies within the Spire, no one who has seen it has come back.”

“I’m going to need a closer look. I’ll have to scout the place. I’ll need supplies too. Help with planning and logistics.”

She nodded. “Take my man-at-arms, Kelmar. He’s loyal, and more importantly, quiet. You’ll need a second set of eyes, someone who knows the terrain.”

“Generous of you.” Frank glanced up at the stained-glass windows. The light had shifted, the colors deepening. The room still looked like it was underwater, but now Frank felt like he was sinking deeper and deeper into the abyss. “Almost too generous.”

“Think of it as an investment.”

He had dealt with enough managers, producers, and studio execs to know when he was being handled. This was soft pressure, the same gilded bribes and polished smiles he’d had to fight through back home. He was being nudged, piece by piece, toward a move that wasn’t entirely his own, but this time the threat beneath the smile wasn’t a loss of business, it was a loss of life.

He offered a shallow bow. “I’ll take a look.”

“Good,” the princess said, lowering herself back into the Maelstrom Seat. “We’ll speak again once you’ve made plans. A word of caution though. Don’t get too close. Not yet.”

“Worried I might solve the puzzle early?”

“No,” she said, her voice suddenly cold. “I’m worried the spire might notice you.”